Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra says the industry will entirely switch to next-generation memory in early 2023. He says that increasing the number of cores in server processors reduces the bandwidth of each core and requires more RAM. This is one of the most critical factors.
By the end of 2023, one in three chips produced by Micron will be DDR5. By the middle of 2024, every second chip will be DDR5. Around the same time, DDR5 will begin to dominate both the server and client segments.
However, there is one more quite interesting detail. Micron is reducing production. About 10% of employees were fired, the number of silicon wafers produced was reduced by 20%. Recall the gradual growth in demand (expected +10% in 2023), and we get a significant increase in the cost of DDR5 RAM. The initiative to deliberately raise the cost of chips is likely to be picked up by other manufacturers, as it has happened several times already.